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By Bimal Shah, CLU, CHFC, CASL bimals@bizactioncoach.com
The nation is paying a huge price in the high billions because of Employee Turnover and costly mistakes made at work. By learning how to retain more of your employees long term, and by avoiding the costliest mistakes at work, you could save yourself or your company an enormous fortune or from a total disaster. The easiest and most cost-effective way to increase retention and avoid the costly mistakes at work is through coaching.
Let’s look at the seven most costliest mistakes at work:
Enemy # 1: Handling Interruptions Immediately:
Entrepreneurs and Employees alike have a common habit to handle interruptions immediately, taking their focus away from the work that was being done at the moment. The reality is many of these interruptions are unnecessary and do not serve the priorities at work. Research shows that 80 percent of the interruptions are trivial in nature and don’t need to be handled immediately. Also it has shown that on an average there are about 56 interruptions in a day and they take an average of 2 hours away from an 8 hour day and 80 percent of them could have been avoided through proper coaching and planning.
Cost to the Nation: According to Bassex International, the cost to the nation is a staggering $588 Billion a year in lost productivity. That is a huge loss and for every small business owner the cost is substantially high that never gets measured. This is a hidden cost that cannot be written off in the profit and loss statements and that’s why they go unnoticed and not acted upon.
How to Avoid this Mistake?
Have a unique coaching system that offers one-on-one coaching, team workshops, and easy integrated daily tracking to measure and enhance daily productivity. The cost of not eliminating interruptions from your workplace is significantly high and the benefit of coaching that will eliminate interruptions can increase your profits or revenues by a great multiple of what you actually pay for the coaching. Get started today and explore the advantage and importance of employee engagement coaching.
Enemy # 2: Not engaged in what you do at work:
You go to work to get work done. According to Gallup State of American Workplace Survey, currently, 30% of the U.S. workforce is engaged in their work, and the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is roughly 2-to-1, meaning that the vast majority of U.S. workers (70%) are not reaching their full potential — a problem that has significant implications for the economy and the individual performance of American companies. Disengagement again is a hidden cost that never gets measured. The key question arises is why there is such a high disengagement at work? The other big question comes to mind is how can engagement be brought back to the workplace? The clear answer is in coaching. The average ROI in coaching is 500 times to 700 times and yet many entrepreneurs and employees just keeping on making that same mistake year after year, decade after decade. For Entrepreneurs, it is the overload, the never ending list of things to do, the daily stress and pressures, and a variety of work and non-work related issues that takes over the focus and engagement at work. Similarly for employees, there are a variety of factors that take over the engagement required at work.
Cost to the Nation: According to Gallup and their State of the American Workplace report, the cost to the nation from disengagement is a staggering $550 Billion a year. According to Harvard, 75 percent of businesses fail in the first three years of starting a business and if you want to succeed, you definitely need to invest in coaching systems that not only prevent failure but also drive your business to the next level.
How to Build Engagement with Employees?
Have a completely customizable coaching, planning, and tracking system that can result in a significant increase in the bottom line of your company. Every top notch successful CEO and entrepreneur has had a coach.
Enemy # 3: Looking for Distractions:
People look for distractions on a daily basis. Distractions are exciting and fun when work isn’t. By making the daily activities at work passionate and purposeful, the distractions have no place. For Entrepreneurs and Employees alike, distractions are even more exciting as the work is very stressful and the hours are long. We have access to so many distractions on a daily basis-the explosion of social media in our face, the email overload and things to do list. Business owners don’t have to be reminded how their lives are being taken over by email, texting, Facebook, Twitter, the Web and other annoying electronic static. (That on top of the usual day-to-day tasks, such as laundry, kids, and … list goes on.) Email alone is overwhelming. Icebreaker, a consulting firm, reckons you spend about 28 percent of work time managing it. The typical CEO gets about 200 to 300 emails per day. Some chief executives had banked up to 70,000–yes, 70,000–unread messages. Every time someone gets an IM, Facebook message, or Tweet, it takes them a whopping 23 minutes to get back to work.
Cost to the Nation: Bassex has calculated a whopping $650 Billion cost in lost productivity. Why do people look for distractions? Why do they need to watch the silly video on You Tube or Facebook, when there are important priorities at work? Many people just come to work to get a pay check and if they just clock in and clock out at the needed time, they would have the paycheck. Here are some mind-blowing facts:
- 2 out of 3 internet users have a social media account
- Facebook has 955 Million users
- You Tube has 4 Billion views per day
- 22 percent of time online is spent on social networking
- 24 Hours a month on Social Networking Alone
- Collectively in US, 12.2 Billion Hours are spent on Social Media EVERY DAY.
- 1 out of 10 workers spends more time on social media than they do working.
- Workers are interrupted every 10.5 minutes by Facebook messages, Tweets, Social Media, Instant Messages and it takes 23 minutes to get back to work.
- Each Social Media user costs their company $4,452 a year.
How to prevent in engagement of distractions at Work?
Considering doing a one year Coaching System to build an everlasting success for your business and your staff. The coaching system should be focused on building passion and purpose on every activity at work. Passion and purpose drives engagement and commitment. Commitment leads to activities and newer capabilities that drive confidence and confidence brings improvement and the essential change.
Enemy # 4: Resisting Systematization:
Majority of the business owners spend time running their business, rather than on their business. Thinking about systematic changes that can be brought about in their business can bring the business on a whole new level. When I do coaching, I hear very often that they face the same problem again and again every day in their operations and efficiency. If you have faced the same problem more than once, you should take a step back and think that there might be a possibility that there might be a “system” based solution that would solve it. The first step in creating a system based solution is to identify the root cause of the problem. What is the reason behind the occurrence of the problem? What are the easiest steps that can be taken to correct the occurrence of the problem at the root cause? If you cannot correct the problem at its root cause, then improve the steps you need to take along the way to come to a completion. Documenting and writing down your steps are often a great step in increasing productivity at work.
Cost to the Nation: Bassex estimates that on an average $2,100 to $4,100 per employee per year is lost in productivity costs by employees who have been given poorly written communication. $48,000 a week is lost in productivity costs with firms more than 1000 employees due to the inability to find information from messy desks. $3,050 per employee is lost in productivity costs in reading and deleting junk email and responding to unnecessary co-worker emails. If these costs were translated into nationwide lost productivity costs, the costs would be in billions of dollars,
How to Build Systematization at Work?
I am a systems expert and can create system for any challenges or problems faced by any employees at work. With the completely customized approach, there will be an immense amount of daily systems that will be brought into play at the business This has to result in a positive change as at the very least, some of them will lead to much a better result and the ones that don’t, we can just go back to the drawing board and improve.
Enemy #5: Trying to Manage Time instead of Prioritization:
Business owners and workers alike think that they can manage time. Nobody can manage time. There is 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and 365 days in a year, except for in a leap year. There is nothing in the world that is going to change that. So how can you manage time? The Merriam Webster dictionary defines manage as “to have control of.” How are we going to have control of time? It is going to run on its own and continue to go on. The only thing we can control is what we do in our time. The only way we can control what we do in our time is what we prioritize to do at any given moment in time. Lack of prioritization is the biggest mistake that happens at work from both the business owner and the employee.
Cost to the Nation: According to Productivity Institute,
- The average person uses 13 different methods to control and manage time, when time is neither manageable nor controllable.
- 2.2 million People die each year in this country and 75 percent of those deaths are largely preventable.
- “Hurry” is one word that has taken more American lives than any other word in the dictionary. Is the death of millions of people due to all the hurriedness they do in life worth the sacrifice?
- The average person spends less than 2 minutes in any meaningful
Communication with their significant other or conversation with their children. Is this proper time management or improper prioritization? If someone says, “I don’t have time for this” what would happen if they repeated the same words as “I don’t have priority for this.”
- 80 percent of workday is spent on things that have little or no value to the workplace or the business.
- In the last 20 years, working time has increased by 15%, and leisure time has decreased by 33 percent.
- 97% of workers, if they become financially independent, would not continue with their current employer or current occupation.
- 75% of all heart attacks happen between 5 AM and 8AM local time and majority of those 75 percent occur on Mondays than any other day of the week.
- 80 percent of Crisis Management events are preventable in nature.
- Average American watches 28 hours of television per week.
How to effectively do better in the time?
It is like putting out fires every time at sites when something doesn’t go as planned. In the day-to-day world, there are so many instances of situations that need immediate attention and action. In a time and environment like this, it is very important to have the systems to deal with those fires that have to put out every hour. This comes through collective team engagement coaching that we are unique and specialize in.
So what can companies do to create an effective retention program? The three step process that is simply explained requires and enormous amount of coaching, planning, and accountability. A unique process that is only offered by us and no one else. Productivity coaching and training, formal educational programs, and mentorship initiatives provide a solid foundation in this unit. Providing clear and transparent career and advancement paths for the strong performers and rock solid training for the ones that have the commitment to the company but lack the training, can build high retention and organic growth from within. Integrated and Effective communication between management and employees and fair compensation programs are two additional factors that can improve morale and reduce turnover.
Enemy #6: Friction and Conflicts at Work:
Productivity is greatly reduced when there is unhealthy conflict or friction. Conflict happens because of attitude and behavior issues. Many employers make the biggest mistake of hiring for specific skill sets but never check the person out for their attitude. They are various mechanisms that can be deployed during the hiring process to check for attitude. Employers should hire for attitude, train for skill, and fire for example. Conflicts can be healthy or unhealthy. Conflicts that are poorly managed and impact negatively on human relations and the efficiency of an organization are unhealthy conflicts. The right kind of constructive criticism and conflict in an organization that has a process how they can debate and provide their arguments, can be healthy and positive to the organization. These types of conflicts, which are properly managed and there are systems set in place for the same, are healthy or positive conflicts.
Cost to the Nation:
According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, employees spend 3.3 hours a week resolving bad or poorly managed conflict. This amounts to roughly 8.3 percent of weekly working hours. Productivity also suffers when a company redesigns workflow only to avoid people having to interact with one another. There are number of studies that show that 30 percent of a manager’s time is spent on resolving conflict. Employees spend on average 20 percent f their working hours managing conflict.
How to effectively manage conflicts?
Conflicts are best managed when there are proper communication standards and systems set in place. This can happen through team engagement and empowerment coaching that can work the employees that have the conflicts and resolve them. A comprehensive training in communication skills and training can be provided through the coaching program. Integrated and Effective communication between management and employees combined with training, protocols, standards, a set of core values, company culture are essential to reducing conflict at workplace.
Mistake #6: Lost Focus by doing Multi-tasking:
Multi-tasking is a huge waste of time and it doesn’t work. There is no such thing as multi-tasking, you are either switching your tasks from one task to another or doing a task in the background, while you are doing another task. If done properly, background tasking, can work very effectively, but multi-tasking just results in lower quality work most of the time. What tends to save the most time, is to do tasks in batches. Send all emails at once in a batch. Reply to all phone messages in a batch.
Cost to the Nation:
According to American Psychological Association, there is a 40 percent drop in productivity when there is multi-tasking done at work. A 2010 French study found that the human brain can handle two complicated tasks without too much trouble, because it has two lobes that can divide responsibility equally between the two. Add a third task, however, and it can overwhelm the frontal cortex and increase the number of mistakes you make. As the brain ages, researchers say, it has a harder time getting back on track after even a brief detour. Heavy Multi-tasking can temporarily lower your IQ by 15 points. Multi-taskers take 50 percent more to accomplish a task and make up to 50 percent more errors.
How to eliminate multi-tasking?
Do one thing at a time, do things in batches. Identify your activities and build an inventory of everything you do with your time. The best solution is hands-on coaching and on-the-spot results or solutions. This is what my Coaching-Planning-Accountability system delivers all the time, every time.
For More information: info@bizactioncoach.com to take your team to the next level of productivity and performance. To register for a free workshop, register at http://bit.ly/29FmS1a
